The beginning of the 20th century, however, witnessed a very marked reawakening. By that time Darwin's doctrine of selection had thor oughly established itself and the public was ac customed to think of biological laws as some thing more than mere hypotheses. By that time, also, the Italian school of criminologists including Lombroso, Garofalo and Ferri had aroused lively discussion of the question as to how far there was a true hereditary criminal type. In England much alarm had been oc casioned by the military reverses in South Africa. Moreover at about the same period Charles Booth's thorough investigations had been revealing the wide extent of poverty and degradation in London. The discussion of Max Nordau's 'Degeneration) (1893) which had aroused widespread fears of progressive deterioration had not yet wholly died away and Benjamin Kidd's Evolution' (1894) which had emphasized the relation of religion and biology to social progress was still the subject of lively comment in pulpit and press. In view of this situation it is not strange that Karl Pearson, the foremost eugenist of Eng land, after Galion, created almost a sensation when in November 1900 he delivered his now famous Newcastle lecture on (National Life from the Standpoint of Science) In this lecture he reviewed what he regarded as sources of weakness in the British population and em phasized the necessity of being ever ready to meet the competition of other peoples. "If the nation," he said, "is to maintain its position in this struggle it must be fully provided with trained brains in every department of national activity. . . . Are we certain we have a reserve of brain-power ready to be trained? We have to remember that man is subject to the universal law of inheritance and that a dearth of capacity may arise if we recruit our society from the inferior and not the better stock." Again he exclaimed, "Our legislators get wonderfully excited over laws relating to horses and cattle; they devote money and time to breeding pur poses and realize the strength of the law of Inheritance when they endow national studs and give prizes to encourage the maintenance of good stock or when again they work for the establishment of selected herds. But which of them has considered domestic legislation from the national history standpoint? What states man has remembered that in the character of the national fertility of to-day is written the strength or weakness of the nation to-morrow?' Primarily through the efforts of Professor Pearson, this lecture was followed a little later by the founding of the journal known as Biometrika. This journal became the particular organ of those eugenists who attacked the problem from the mathematical and statistical point of view. The impetus given to the move ment by the various investigations published in this journal, however, was greatly strengthened by developments following another striking event —also purely scientific in its nature— which had occurred unexpectedly in 1900. This was the rediscovery by several independent workers of the so-called Mendelian laws of heredity. These laws had been announced by Gregor Mendel as early as 1868 but had received practically no attention. After their redis covery, however, biologists all over the world began systematic experiments to ascertain the extent to which the so-called "laws° applied. Hitherto such "laws° of heredity as had been formulated always expressed a relationship be tween the average amount of a given trait in an entire group of ancestors and the average amount of the same trait in the entire group of their descendants. For example, the Galtonian "law of ancestral heredity° was, that two parents contribute together, on the average, one half of the total heritage of the offspring; the four grandparents, one-quarter ; the eight great grandparents, one-eighth. This, even if true, tells nothing about the probability of a given individual inheriting any given characteristic from any particular ancestor. The Mendelian laws, however, formulated relationships between specific traits of a single pair of ancestors and the corresponding traits in their descendants. For example, it happens that eye color in man appear to "mendelize.° Thus to take a single specific instance it is held, with a high degree of probability, that if both parents have blue or gray eyes they cannot have children with black or brown eyes. The laws also express other equally definite but more complex rela tionships of a highly significant character. How many of the important heritable characteristics of man follow the Mendelian laws is not yet known. The problem is one susceptible of ac curate investigation, however, and rapid strides are now being made in solving it. Some notion of the importance of the results likely to follow as further facts are collected may be gained by consideration of a single one out of many discoveries—namely, the operation of one phase of the law in the case of feeble-minded ness. This trait is said to behave like the blue
color of eyes: that is, almost without exception, if both parents are feeble-minded none of the children will be normal. Dr. Henry H. God dard, one of the foremost experts on feeble mindedness in this country, found this to be true in the case of all but six of 482 children whose parents were all feeble-minded.
The importance for eugenics of the dis covery of the Mendelian laws and of the farther investigation of the extent of their validity is evident. In the case of feeble-mindedness alone, the facts stated above, taken together with other known relationships of similar definiteness, con stitute ample justification for active efforts to prevent propagation by the feeble-minded. This is not the place to present extended discussion of the technical phases of the biological side of the eugenic problem. Attention may properly be directed, however, to some of the hopes and anticipations, cherished by contemporary eugen ists, that will indicate the possibilities of im provement if, in fact, the biological basis of the claims becomes fully established. Dr. Charles Davenport, director of the department of ex perimental evolution of the Carnegie Institution at Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, is, at the present time, one of the most enthusiastic be lievers in what the future holds in store for eugenics. In describing the plans for the work of the committee on eugenics of the American Breeders' Association he outlined a number of interesting plans for future advance. Accord ing to Dr. Davenport one sub-committee of that organization is charged with the study of the feeble-minded. "This committee,° he says, "has most important interests since the number of feeble-minded in the United States alone is probably not less than 150,000 of which 15,000 are in institutions.° Other contemplated types of work for the eugenic committee included study of the protoplasmic basis of eye defects; deafness, predisposition toward lung and throat trouble and toward diseases of the excretory and circulatory organs. Still other forms of investigation which Dr. Davenport hoped could be undertalcen were studies of criminality and pauperism, the effects of consanguineous mar riages and of °such mongrelization as is pro ceeding on a vast scale in this country.° He was particularly anxious that the extant records of institutions be studied. The amount of such data is enormous. "They lie hidden in records of our numerous charity organizations, our 42 institutions for the feeble-minded, our 115 schools and homes for the deaf and blind, our 350 hospitals for the insane, our 1,200 refuge homes, our 1,300 prisons, our 1,500 hospitals and our 2,500 almshouses. Our great insurance cotnpanies and our college gymnasiums have tens of thousands of records of the characters of human blood lines.° By study of these records it will be possible °to learn whence come our 300,000 insane and feeble-minded, our 160,000 blind or deaf, the 2,000,000 that are an nually cared for by our hospitals and homes, our 80,000 prisoners and the thousands of critninals that are not in prison and our 100,000 paupers in almshouses and out. This three or four per cent of our population is a fearful drag on our civilization. . . . A new plague that ren dered four per cent of our population, chiefly at the most productive age, not only incom petent but a burden costing $100,000,000 yearly to support would instantly attract universal at tention and millions would be forthcoming for its study as they have been for the study of cancer. But we have become so used to crime, disease and degeneracy that we take them as necessary evils. That they were, in the world's ignorance is granted. That they must remain so, is denied. . . . Vastly more effective than ten million dollars to 'Charity' would be ten millions to eugenics. He who by such a gift should redeem mankind from vice, imbecility and suffering would be the world's wisest philanthropist.° A considerable part of the actual investigations outlined by Professor Davenport has been undertaken under his own direction at Cold Spring Harbor' and the results have been published from time to time in the bulletins of Eugenics Record Office.
The phases of eugenics emphasized by Pro fessor Davenport in the foregoing account are chiefly negative. They have to do with efforts to eliminate the unfit. Positive eugenics deals with a wholly different field, namely, the effort to increase the productivity of the best stocics. There is no doubt whatever that the birth rate among the more highly educated classes through out the civilized world tends to be much lower than that of the more ignorant classes. It is true that a corresponding state of affairs exists in the matter of death rates. In spite of this, however, the actual effective contribution of the better educated to the next generation is at a much lower rate than that of the ignorant.